Initially, there was talk about a discount for people who owned the original. I might've completely missed it in my hurry to buy the game, though.

The price is medium-high indeed, but you essentially pay for two SSG created scenarios, even though one is also available for free.

Like Kharkov, you essentially pay for 1 scenario and an editor, but at least in this case additional scenarios are included in the package. We would all have liked more scenarios, but SSG has already more or less promised to re-release the original Battles in Italy scenarios for free, Husky being the first.

The Across the Dnepr mega-scenario is basically in and of itself more content than the original Kharkov release, hence the price point. The three free scenarios in the Kharkov update are also included in the ATD release, but you can get them either way as a thank you from SSG and the scenario design community to Kharkov fans around the world. Lots of extra gaming with all the benefits of the new engine.

ORIGINAL: TARG I called digital rivers and they have no clue about a discount for previous owners of ATD? Odd really

There is no separate discount as it was unfortunately impossible to do that because our records of the original ATD purchases are incomplete. It was one of the first releases we did through our current system and things were not quite as well organized back then. The current price was set with that in mind.

Also, since Across the Dnepr was originally released seven years ago and this new one had to be created from the ground up for the new engine, I think setting the price slightly lower than usual with the expansion model rather than going for full price with a special discount works just as well.

The Across the Dnepr mega-scenario is basically in and of itself more content than the original Kharkov release, hence the price point. The three free scenarios in the Kharkov update are also included in the ATD release, but you can get them either way as a thank you from SSG and the scenario design community to Kharkov fans around the world. Lots of extra gaming with all the benefits of the new engine.

Well - I am not sure about that Erik - as someone who already owns the original ATD I would say I already have the map and most of the research / graphics ?

Sorry - but - as I say - if this was a new battle fine ... but I wonder how much new stuff is in this release to warrant a full price release ?

Again - as I say I bought it - but I am afraid I am a little disappointed in the price ...

ORIGINAL: DBeves Well - I am not sure about that Erik - as someone who already owns the original ATD I would say I already have the map and most of the research / graphics ?

If you own Kharkov, then you've just got three scenarios for free in addition to a new paid expansion. The new Across the Dnepr, while it's based on the same battle campaign as the original, did require quite a bit more research and work to implement in the new engine and AI. I think you will find that although the original was great, it is a much better scenario and challenge with the Kharkov engine and all its features.

I do not know about the price but if it helps SSG too release more scenarios then I'll gladly pay. Also does anyone else have the Kalach Bridge scenario in their game now? I don't remember downloading this scenario before.

I probably have every beta and full scenario out there for Kharkov installed Eisenhammer, so I'm not sure if Kalatsch was somehow included in the release too.

The lack of a discount isn't something I'm happy with, as it was clearly promised earlier and generally the communication to the fans has been fairly poor. However, I don't blame that entirely on SSG, as they had various troubles of their own and are simply not a big development team/studio so if a few extra euro's helps them in some way, that's fine with me.

For those thinking the price is high: you might be right from various perspectives, but keep in mind that you also essentially pay to support the development of future scenarios for the engine. I'd also strongly suggest that you visit the official forums at ssg.com.au/forums as the vast majority of all scenarios are never truly officially released and posted on the SSG custom scenarios page or elsewhere.

I've been editing/unofficially updating scenarios for about a year now, and nothing I've done is officially hosted as it isn't an official version of the scenario.

The Husky 2 scenario includes some errors in the editor, which I'll try to fix unofficially by tomorrow. There are also some odd things in the ATD scenario, like SSG's tendency to make all artillery motorized/tracked and in this case basically sentencing the majority of the Soviet artillery to death. I'll probably edit that at some point too, although of course that edited version won't be official. Perhaps the changes to the editor will at one point be official through a patch as they won't really effect the scenario.

I own the Decisive Battles series (including the original ATD), Battlefront and Kharkov (including ATD2 now) and SSG still has my support. Their prices might be somewhat steep, true, but they do offer great support to the community. The sad thing is that only a small part of the community is active on the official forums, so many people might not have known that Kirovograd has been available for a year, albeit officially in "beta" stage (the differences between the current version and the beta are minimal) just to name one example. I guess that if you only played the regular Kharkov scenario, it was possibly too expensive, just like ATD2 might be too expensive if you just play the scenarios that are included and nothing released afterwards.

On the one hand - it was as I expected. SSG are not cheap. They never have been and it doesn't look like they are going to change that any time soon.

On the other hand...I said "OUCH!" about Kharkov:Disaster on the Donetz - but I eventually bought it and I was very, very impressed. The quality of the product is immense and the gaming system is spot on - with particular "mention in dispatches" being given to the Areas of Operation and the variety that they entail.

What I was trying to say was I understand the "OUCH!" thoughts, but SSG have proved themselves, at least in my eyes, to offer quality gaming and, again imo, at a reasonable price (entertainment value per hour).

I can't buy this month...not with having bought Midway and Distant Worlds...but I will get this.

ORIGINAL: ComradeP The lack of a discount isn't something I'm happy with, as it was clearly promised earlier and generally the communication to the fans has been fairly poor. However, I don't blame that entirely on SSG, as they had various troubles of their own and are simply not a big development team/studio so if a few extra euro's helps them in some way, that's fine with me.

We did not promise a discount and as far as I knew that had only been an internal discussion, which ended up with us realizing we could not do it based on incomplete records and the price ended up being set with that taken into account.

quote:

For those thinking the price is high: you might be right from various perspectives, but keep in mind that you also essentially pay to support the development of future scenarios for the engine. I'd also strongly suggest that you visit the official forums at ssg.com.au/forums as the vast majority of all scenarios are never truly officially released and posted on the SSG custom scenarios page or elsewhere.

This is very true. Games like SSG makes are very niche games at this point and we cannot charge mass-market prices for them - both we and SSG agree on that. If we priced something like ATD Second Edition at $19.99 that would be the last expansion they could afford to make.

ORIGINAL: JudgeDredd On the other hand...I said "OUCH!" about Kharkov:Disaster on the Donetz - but I eventually bought it and I was very, very impressed. The quality of the product is immense and the gaming system is spot on - with particular "mention in dispatches" being given to the Areas of Operation and the variety that they entail.

This to me is the most important point - once you play the game and understand what SSG does terms of the work and quality they put into these, you realize that it's worth the money.

quote:

What I was trying to say was I understand the "OUCH!" thoughts, but SSG have proved themselves, at least in my eyes, to offer quality gaming and, again imo, at a reasonable price (entertainment value per hour). I can't buy this month...not with having bought Midway and Distant Worlds...but I will get this.

ORIGINAL: TARG The fact that we were told that previous owners of ATD would get a discount. Then on release day there is no mention of a discount and not only that but I had to ask rather than be told about the reversal. I am also dissapointed in the reason why no discount could be applied, it seems to me to be less than honest. I still chose to support SSG but the transaction with Matrix has been rather sleazy in my opinion.

When did we promise a discount? If we did, I apologize, but I do not recall that. There was an internal discussion on that, which ended when we realized we did not have a complete list of ATD owners to verify against. SSG and we agreed at that point to price it as it is now, given that the content is greater than what was in Kharkov but it's still an expansion and thus less than full game price.

Every decision here was made in cooperation with SSG, there is no attempt at sleaziness or bait and switch here.

SSG is pleased to announce that a new version of the popular Across the Dnepr scenario will be available as a scenario for the Kharkov system. The new Across the Dnepr will have the following features: New, larger map Revised Order of Battle New unit artwork Fully compatible with the Kharkov game system (will need Kharkov to run)New Mystery Variants

Discount for existing Across the Dnepr users Pricing and release timing will be announced in due course"

This was in the manual addendum for Kharkov.

Also:

"The original ATD came with a serial number which I'm sure Matrix has kept track off and which can be retrieved so that existing owners can qualify for a discount.

I'm not happy with what you're trying to pull here Erik, a discount was officially promised by SSG. You could at least not try to dodge that issue.

As TARG mentioned: one of the ways to give people a discount is by serial and regardless of how "we did not have a complete list of ATD owners to verify against", I have a serial and have registered my copy on the website. It shouldn't be too difficult to give everyone who registered their copy a discount or to create a program/function of a webpage which validates the serial, removes the serial from the checklist afterwards (so it can't be used again) and gives the customer a discount. Incomplete as the system might've been, we have serials.

I see - Gregor posted this on the SSG forum in August of 2008. This was not an announcement from us and I think he posted this well over a year ago based on our assumption that we would do it that way, before the internal discussion was complete. You are welcome to also confirm this with Gregor if you want, but the pricing as it is now was set with the knowledge that we could not do a discount and SSG was fully in agreement with the pricing.

I imagine all that discussion on price was price was pre GFC. As a large retailer myself I can tell you that pretty much reset the playing field on costs and the ability to get a loan for anything business related. I for one want to see SSG continue their line and would hate to see then undervalue themselves.

$45 AUD will get you a main course and a Carona in a crappy mexican diner over here - ATDII certainly represents good value compared to most anything else at that price IMHO.

ORIGINAL: ComradeP I'm not happy with what you're trying to pull here Erik, a discount was officially promised by SSG. You could at least not try to dodge that issue.

I'm not trying to "pull" anything. This is the first I've heard of a discount being announced in any way. This also looks like Gregor posting his early assumptions on his own forum, we did not make any announcement or promise regarding this and all the official announcements here have made no promises in that regard. We had an internal discussion on that subject and I was unaware that anything had been posted publicly.

I would also note as I have several times now that the pricing in the store now was set and agreed to with SSG based on no discount being available. In the case of a discount, I expect it would have been a higher base price with a discount offer for previous owners.

quote:

As TARG mentioned: one of the ways to give people a discount is by serial and regardless of how "we did not have a complete list of ATD owners to verify against", I have a serial and have registered my copy on the website. It shouldn't be too difficult to give everyone who registered their copy a discount or to create a program/function of a webpage which validates the serial, removes the serial from the checklist afterwards (so it can't be used again) and gives the customer a discount. Incomplete as the system might've been, we have serials.

Yes, we could have offered discounts to some customers, for whom we had information. Do you think it would have been fair to those who also purchased it but whose ownership we could not verify? How do you think that would have gone over?

I'm sorry that Gregor made a public post in 2008 which was taken as a promise for this release in 2010. Unfortunately, we were not made aware that he had announced that in 2008 and when we discussed the final pricing together with SSG we all agreed on the current price without a discount.

I understand now why people think we are somehow screwing customers over. The fact is this is a miscommunication and it is now too late, even if we could, to change the price and add some kind of discount codes. I regret that this has cost goodwill and created disappointment, that was never our intent.

ATDII certainly represents good value compared to most anything else at that price IMHO.

All nighter for you Pete? I agree that ATD2 will probably provide a fine value like all other SSG games, but I understand why people are confused about the discount issue. The fact that SSG seems to be on radio silence for a while now doesn't really help either.

Erik:

Several people, but mostly me, have mentioned the discount on the official SSG forums recently and SSG has made no comment that a discount was no longer an option. The only comment having anything to do with costs was Roger saying:

quote:

On the financial side though .. we (SSG) have talked about a number of things in meetings but the bottom line is that there is not a lot we can do to change things at the moment and this is frustrating. Hopefully this year will see things turn around.

If this is all a miscommunication, it's a really unfortunate one, but I hope you and the other Matrix staff can see why some people are frustrated due to this issue. As SSG has basically remained silent on the discount for months and didn't rebuke statements made by others that there would be a discount, people thought the discount would still be in place.

quote:

Yes, we could have offered discounts to some customers, for whom we had information. Do you think it would have been fair to those who also purchased it but whose ownership we could not verify? How do you think that would have gone over?

Sorry, but I still don't see the problem.

If you don't have a serial, you can't install or patch the game so ownership becomes somewhat irrelevant without a serial. As long as people can prove they own a copy of ATD through giving a serial, they can be identified as an owner. Some people might feel they got shafted because they couldn't find their serial, but those people can't play the game they own to begin with so they can't really prove they own it through registration.

ORIGINAL: ComradeP Several people, but mostly me, have mentioned the discount on the official SSG forums recently and SSG has made no comment that a discount was no longer an option. The only comment having anything to do with costs was Roger saying:

quote:

On the financial side though .. we (SSG) have talked about a number of things in meetings but the bottom line is that there is not a lot we can do to change things at the moment and this is frustrating. Hopefully this year will see things turn around.

If this is all a miscommunication, it's a really unfortunate one, but I hope you and the other Matrix staff can see why some people are frustrated due to this issue. As SSG has basically remained silent on the discount for months and didn't rebuke statements made by others that there would be a discount, people thought the discount would still be in place.

I understand - it is indeed a very unfortunate miscommunication. We don't read the SSG forums except on rare occasions and in our internal discussions with SSG, we were never aware that a discount had been announced to the public. The discount was very much a point of discussion and in the end the issues with incomplete records are what made us all decide against it. Frankly, I'm guessing SSG also did not think they had made a promise of a discount as both of our companies are customer-oriented, we always try to generate goodwill rather than disappointment.

quote:

Sorry, but I still don't see the problem. If you don't have a serial, you can't install or patch the game so ownership becomes somewhat irrelevant without a serial. As long as people can prove they own a copy of ATD through giving a serial, they can be identified as an owner. Some people might feel they got shafted because they couldn't find their serial, but those people can't play the game they own to begin with so they can't really prove they own it through registration.

I wasn't clear enough in explaining the issue. We no longer have a complete record here of all ATD serial numbers. We know customers have their serial numbers, but we can only verify some, not all of them. This is the only game for which we have this problem, as I believe it was the first serialized game we had and the records were not well organized.